Hundertwasser on Hundertwasser

What does a man need in order to be happy.

Progression is retrogression and retrogression becomes progression.

My painting is, I think, completely different because it is vegetative painting.

One reason why other people do not want to paint
vegetatively or want to take to a vegetative way of
life is because it begins too unpretentiously, it does
not have great eclat or drum roll; on the contrary it
grows quite slowly and simply, and that does not
appeal to our social order, people want instant
results based on the slash and burn principle.

I should like, and I do it too quite instinctively,
to live an example, live an example to people, paint
for them a paradise that each may have, he need
only grasp it.

Paradise is there, but we destroy it.

I want to show how basically simple it is to have paradise on earth.

And everything that the religions and dogmas and the various political creeds promise, is all nonsense.

And there of course I come into conflict with
society which completely misunderstands that.

They believe that it is eccentricity, just a
publicity stunt, but they forget that that is part of
myself, that that is my natural form of expression.

Why may a human being not do what he needs to do, like a flower.

The colourful, the abundant, the manifold, is always better than mediocre grey and uniformity.

Only those who think and live creatively will survive in this life and beyond.

One must live as though one were at war and everything rationed

Man must be careful

Must think independently, must economize

Should not waste blindly

Man must take care that the cycle functions

The cycle from eating to shitting functions naturally

But the cycle from shitting to eating is disconnected

Being happy does not depend on wealth at all

Does not depend on production

That is difficult to say.

Paintings for me are gateways, which enable me, if I have
been successful, to open them into a world which is both
near and far for us, to which we have no admission, in
which we find ourselves, but which we cannot perceive,
which is against the real world

Our parallel world, from which we remove ourselves in one respect

Yes, and that is the paradise, that is what we are in,
what we are arrested in, and which some inexplicable power denies us.

And so I have succeeded in throwing windows open

How I succeeded is difficult to explain

On no account by force, nor by calculation, nor by
intelligence, nor necessarily by intuition, but almost
as though sleep-walking.

The work of the artist is very difficult, because it
cannot be done by force, diligence or intelligence

I think that by strength and diligence and intelligence
one can do anything else in life, but the rewards of
art are totally unattainable by these means

Therefore, by goodness even a good person, finds
himself suddenly up against a barrier, he cannot get beyond it

It is very strange, isn’t it, if a man contributes all
he has, diligence, goodness, perseverance, intelligence, everything that he has, and in spite of that he
doesn’t get anywhere

What is the reason for this.

I believe, and I am absolutely certain, and therefore
I believe, that painting is a religious occupation,
that the actual impulse comes from without, from
something else that we do not know, an indefinable
power which comes or does not come and which guides
your hand

People used to say in earlier times that it was the
muse, for example, it's a stupid thing to say of course,
but it is some kind of illumination

And the only thing one can do is to prepare the
ground, so that this extraterrestrial impulse or
however else one might describe it can reach you.

That means keeping oneself ready

That means eliminating the will, eliminating the
intelligence, eliminating "wanting to do better",
eliminating ambition

I should perhaps like to be known as the magician of
vegetation or something similar. We are in need of magic
I fill a picture until it is full with magic, as one
fills up a glass with water